Welcome to the guide to cards there’s no way your opponents will have at Grand Prix Sydney 2016! This is intended to be a comprehensive list of fast, interactive effects to watch out for in Shadows Over Innistrad / Eldritch Moon limited, focusing a bit more on sealed than draft.

I’ve left out instant-speed cards that do not interact with the opponent (ie. Scour the Laboratory, Succumb to Temptation), and the only one that I feel is a bit contentious is maybe Catalog, as it provides an instant-speed Madness outlet from hand, so has the potential for some sick blowouts.

Enjoy, and if you make it to the end actually reading my commentary, you’re truly a masochist.

WHITE

1 CMC

Strength of Arms: The one mana trick, bane of the combat step. About as generic as it comes, but if you take ONE THING away from this article, let it be this: Tristan is great. Or that there are a lot tricks in this set that give +2/+2, so your first check should always be “how much of a blowout is +2/+2”?

2 CMC

Puncturing Light: Remember that you can always play around this little fella by pumping your guys before they attack or block.

Blessed Alliance: This is just a nightmare to attack into. A strong reason to never go alone.

Long Road Home: Not much to see here, most likely to thwart a removal spell or snag a token.

Repel the Abominable: Worth remembering if they have A LOT of humans, unlikely to make much of appearance over the weekend, unless you’re on the bubble.

3 CMC

Eerie Interlude: Incredibly niche, and at rare I wouldn’t devote any brainspace to worrying about this.

Survive the Night: Decent as any other trick with “Investigate”, but probably one of the least commonly played.

Borrowed Grace: The first of the Escalate common tricks that are going to be a nightmare to remember. So just remember this mnemonic: +2/+2!

Drogskol Shieldmate: Reasonably low impact, I wouldn’t worry about this guy much unless I was hell-bent on aggression and full up on 2/2s. Most common/uncommon flash guys in this format have 3 toughness, so there’s another little shortcut for you.

4 CMC

Silverstrike: I love it when my opponent passes with 3 and a white open, and the look on their face when you just pass it straight on back. 9 times out of 10, it’s Silverstrike.

Tenacity: Some people are really high on this card, but I’m not such a big fan. Keep it in mind when opponents go for weird alpha strikes.

Give No Ground: This card is pretty much unplayable, so I’m pretty much guaranteed to lose to it at some point. I wouldn’t worry about it.

3 CMC

Biting Rain: Unlikely to show up as trick, but you should be aware of this if your deck’s full of x/2s and x/1s anyways.

Gisa’s Bidding / Twins of Maurer Estate / Voldaren Pariah / Weirded Vampire: Lots of 3-cmc black Madness critters to be aware of. I just want to mention that Pariah’s transform ability is instant speed, because at prerelease I saw a real sick play where someone Madness-ed in Pariah and transformed it and their opponent cried… Ok, it was me. I did the crying.

X CMC

GREEN

1 CMC

Confront the Unknown: I’m really sad that I don’t have 6 opportunities to open this card anymore. Worth watching your opponent’s behaviour with clues; if they’re not cracking them at every opportunity, this could be why.